A few weeks later I got the exact same type of swelling in my right knee, but I dosed myself with Naproxen right away and it passed fairly swiftly. But since a couple of days ago the damn thing is back again, infecting the right knee once more and this time building to almost the same level as the first time around. The difference being that this time I didn’t self-medicate with Naproxen but rather waited to see what would happen.

So today I did another test for lyme and I got the knee drained of fluids to alleviate the symptoms at least. Got a good 90 ml out of the right knee joint and hopefully things will get (temporarily) better before it fills up again. I see now that there are plenty of funny Youtube videos of the draining procedure also. I’m impressed with the amount of people who seem to do this at home to themselves. Is that the American health care model perhaps? There are some horror stories out there alright.

I don’t know if I want it to be lyme or not, but I would sure like an answer and start working on a solution.

Addendum: Two weeks of Doxyferm (Doxycycline). A very broad antibiotic that is thankfully safe for those with renal impairment. So far so good. Had a swollen wrist last week but that has now subsided as well. Hopefully there will no other episodes.

Best guess so far is reactive arthritis of some sort. Or possibly lyme disease, which can also give a sort of arthritis in late stages. Some sort of bacteria at any rate.

I did NSAID for a couple of days but have to cease due to limited kidney function. Don’t know if they helped or if it’s rest or a natural development but swelling has gone down over the weekend. ESR and in particular CRP have improved greatly since Friday. White blood cell count remains normal, suggesting at least that this is no simple infection like I originally thought. I was fooled by the fact that I feel like I’m infected by a cold or a slight influenza. A bit groggy, fatigued, very slight headache that comes and goes, a general feverish feeling. No actual fever though, checked multiple times. Might have fooled myself there because hands seem a bit colder than usual. Sounds like lyme doesn’t it? Or a case of hypochondria. Haha. But it’s funny cause I’ve been unusually light sensitive in the last couple of months. Did a test for lyme this morning at any rate. Detection seems slow and dodgy though so I don’t know.

Damned if I know what caused the disc injury in the first place. Sitting to much in front of a computer in a bad posture? Or heavy lifting, again in a bad posture perhaps? At any rate I got the distinct impression that these injuries can develop over several stages and can originate with cracks in the disc that could be several years old and then bloom so to speak with a sudden forward or sideway motion.

So I promptly went to a physiotherapist to get some advise on what to do (and more importantly not to do). I’ve now got a solid training program now (and a damn good reason to train) as well as some insight into what I’ve been doing wrong. Like bending forward to pick things up, or even bending forward to brush your teeth. I was surprised at how even the tiniest of things can tip the scales. I’ll also have to be more careful about the shoes and sandals I wear. The sandals I picked up last year at a sale for instance have been an unmitigated disaster from this perspective. Not that I didn’t already know this.

On a side note, whoever caused the Falafel stand outside of Saluhallen to relocate, well fuck you buddy! I had to survive on Snickers bars.

Addendum: I also caught a fairly bad cold / influenza. Wow. Great. I suspect it was during my visit to the imaging center. Ironic.

Addendum 2: Another thing that also sticks to you, aside from contagions that is, would be the feeling of despair over the ever increasing numbers of god-awful street musicians and beggars. Never saw that ten years ago. Or perhaps I just wasn’t looking hard enough. I do remember that phenomenon from larger cities like Paris or London though. I’m struck with such a complex mix of emotions ranging from annoyance and anger to sadness, guilt and embarrassment.

The results came back without any remark so I guess I have a severe case of white-coat hypertension, in addition to my other problems. Now if I could only figure out what is driving the heart rate through the roof at the first sign of mental or physical stress.

The good

• The chest strap was easy and quite comfortable. Connection and pulse reading worked out of the box.
• Battery time, using the product for an hour a day and no alarms, is 11 months for the watch and 28 months for the strap. Both batteries are familiar CR 2032 type and are user replaceable. In other words, Beurer permits the user to change batteries at home.
• The watch can record training sessions and connect to a PC and Beurer’s EasyFit software. The software is minimalistic and seems to offer plenty of ways to import and export data. Version 2.0 was updated 27.08.09 and Vista/7 compatibility is reportedly ok. The system is also Speedbox-compatible.
• Illumination and both visual and auditory alarms for dropping out of programmed pulse range.

The ugly

• Watch design is kind of flimsy. At least compared to Casio’s titanium bracelets. Obviously. Bracelet could have been a little wider and more rubber than plastic.
• Speedbox will cost you as much as the watch itself.

That is all I got at the moment having just unpacked the watch. All in all this seems like a really nice product.

Now it turns out it wasn’t primary hypertension after all. The analysis of the kidney biopsy I did pegged the actual root of the problem as IgA nephropathy ("Berger’s disease"). I will have to do more tests over time to know where this is going but from what I understand, kidney filtration capacity is way down. Though thankfully proteinuria has improved considerably. And if anything, blood pressure is in fact too low at this point.

Also, one additional complication that I was made aware of was acidosis. Could be what has affected my physical and mental state lately, and not any side effect of the blood pressure medicine as I first suspected. It’s funny because I always wanted to try out bicarbonate to see how it affected lactic acid. But this stuff is like soda in a pill. Bubbly.

Another funny thing is that apparently there is some circumstantial evidence to suggest that omega-3 fatty acids might slow the progression of renal failure. That sounds pretty desperate to me, and goes to show how little has been accomplished in this field. If my last and best hope so to speak is in fact fish oil then I’m in deep shit.

The good news is that I can at least sleep at night and that the headaches are gone. Hopefully I will have a diagnosis soon and statistically speaking it will probably be one of primary hypertension. Perhaps in time I can a get a fine tuned regiment of medications that will more or less fix the problem without any major side effects. Since there is so much money in making blood pressure medication, I doubt we will ever see a real effort to cure primary hypertension.

• Blood pressure chart

On a similar note I did acquire an Omron M9 (M10 equivalent) blood pressure monitor to keep track of my blood pressure at home. One thing I instantly learned was that it’s a big difference between blood pressure readings at a hospital and at home. Looking at the diastolic pressure alone, if I read 70 mmHg at home I can expect 90 mmHg at the hospital. Obviously it’s not an exact science but just to get an idea of how much it fluctuates.

All of this brings into question what my actual blood pressure is and what it was in a normal situation. The nightly headaches ought to be enough of a clue to suggest it was far too high, sure. Blood and protein in the urine are also clear signs of a problem. But then again, a horizontal position obviously increases the pressure on the brain and other parts of the body. I know now I can’t really trust the measurements taken in a "white coat" surrounding (even if my problems are more of a general social sort). I wonder how to best tune medication in this case. Getting within pressure limits in one setting causes more or less hypotension in the other and vice versa. Perhaps I am over-complicating the situation but this is one problem I can’t quite get over. It would be nice to be able to tailor the medication to a particular day or have medicine that deployed itself with more intelligence.

My personal blood pressure for the last couple of weeks:

Seeing as I ran out of blades for my old Gillette Mach 3 type razor I started looking around. After all it has been a while since these razors were in fashion and so I figured there might just be something better around the corner. I considered going for a safety razor, but the learning curve and preparation put me off. So in the end I decided on the Gillette Fusion Power or whatever it’s called. Frighteningly expensive spare blades and a questionable need for a five blade design but I figured that since I seldom change the blades anyway and keep them dry to prevent oxidation, maintenance costs wouldn’t be much of a problem. Mach 3 blades weren’t exactly cheap either.

The pulsating design seems like something of a gimmick, but other than that it actually worked better than the three blade Mach 3 model. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now and it seems pretty much as sharp as it ever was. It seems to follow the facial contours a little better and as an added bonus I don’t get nearly any hair cuttings stuck between or behind the blades compared to the Mach 3 design. But in the end I guess that all depends on the thickness of one’s facial hair. The razor head is just that much bigger and easier to clean anyway. The Fusion razor may not be the best razor around, but it is probably the best for lazy bums like myself that loathe shaving.

So I decided to try a relatively new silicon-type lens called Biofinity (Coopervision) that promised better comfort. I don’t know whether it has been cleared for extended wear yet. I don’t really care though. The specs look good. And they come highly recommended judging by a quick Google appraisal. The only other alternative lens that offered better comfort (in theory) seemed to be Acuvue Oasys, but that lens doesn’t come close to the water content of Biofinity and doesn’t seem to be rated for a month but rather two weeks of continuous use.

I’ll post opinions when I got some.